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'PLANET COMICS' (is deserving of its own thread)
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6,231 posts in this topic

On ‎3‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 3:06 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

I've never seen a full set before. Particularly pleased to see the 'Planet #19'. And the reds on the '53' show very deep. The '#18' is the mystery - why choose to alter the cover colors? For comparison:

 

Planet Comics #18 CGC 6.5.jpg

Is 18 supposed to be purple? Yours is the only purple one I have ever seen, goes well with your red 17 :)

 

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6 hours ago, Flex Mentallo said:

Here's a copy with better colors than mine.

lf.jpg

I absolutely LOVE the deep purple cover, but I think the book is supposed to be blue as you find far more examples of blue covers out there. Or is it yet another example of Fiction House printing variances and quality control out the window? The reds are extremely strong in your examples, maybe yours is right and all of these other ones got short on red?

Or is it just that the scan of the book has had it's red tweaked?

A.jpg

B.jpg

C.jpg

D.jpg

E.jpg

F.jpg

Edited by Artboy99
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Just now, CrazyQuinn said:

That is quite a color difference between all if those!! I like the look of that deep purple color though! :)

I agree, it looks fabulous.  A lot of the early Planets have vast color differences.

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9 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

Or is it just that the scan of the book has had it's red tweaked?

It could be a factor, couldn't it? Scanners vary - my old one was dreadful with reds so in the end I ditched it, and have yet to replace it.  I do think violets and magentas are - somewhat like deep reds - colors present in Fiction House books at certain points in the print run when the colors really 'pop'. It seems to me that FH's printers tried to eke out the colors - ie printed too many copies of the covers before re-inking the plates.  So between re-inkings, the colors would gradually weaken in density. I notice that certain colors are used to add fine detail to, say, folds in clothing, but copies where that is present are far scarcer than those where that overlay is absent. But it's all complicated further by what happens to a given copy over time - storage, sunlight - and finally, the quality of a scan.

 

I've taken the Rockford copy and run it through a single filter in photoshop. I found the results rather surprising.  [Warning - these images may damage your health!]

 

Here is what happens when the reds are tweaked:

A.thumb.jpg.red.jpg

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..so, I think it is more about color saturation setting in a given scanner that may distort the colors, rather than a bias towards one color or another.

 

Lastly, I just used my smart phone to take an admittedly very poor quality photo of my #17 and #18. Tell me what you see... (that's a sincere request, as I have a slight red/green deficiency which can make it harder for me to differentiate certain colors that leap out for most people). Is the 'purple' of my #18 slightly 'greyer' here?

20170321_105659.jpg

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24 minutes ago, Flex Mentallo said:

..so, I think it is more about color saturation setting in a given scanner that may distort the colors, rather than a bias towards one color or another.

 

Lastly, I just used my smart phone to take an admittedly very poor quality photo of my #17 and #18. Tell me what you see... (that's a sincere request, as I have a slight red/green deficiency which can make it harder for me to differentiate certain colors that leap out for most people). Is the 'purple' of my #18 slightly 'greyer' here?

20170321_105659.jpg

Hard to tell with the glare from the mylar bags, but I do know this: I want a rivet Planet.

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1 hour ago, Flex Mentallo said:

..so, I think it is more about color saturation setting in a given scanner that may distort the colors, rather than a bias towards one color or another.

 

Lastly, I just used my smart phone to take an admittedly very poor quality photo of my #17 and #18. Tell me what you see... (that's a sincere request, as I have a slight red/green deficiency which can make it harder for me to differentiate certain colors that leap out for most people). Is the 'purple' of my #18 slightly 'greyer' here?

20170321_105659.jpg

More deep blue and the woman's dress is orange instead of red.

Your 17 isn't as red either, the background looks more deep dark brown than red.

 

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11 hours ago, CrazyQuinn said:

 Are those others printing variances or fading?

Not fading - as noted, FH colors can widely vary. 

FH had full-color interior ads and that's a good indicator to see the colors as printed. For example, a cover may have a color variant the same as an interior ad, so the odds are it was just printed that way.

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1 hour ago, Artboy99 said:

More deep blue and the woman's dress is orange instead of red.

Your 17 isn't as red either, the background looks more deep dark brown than red.

 

Okay, thanks. Hopefully that will prevent anyone from searching for something that doesn't exist!

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3 hours ago, Flex Mentallo said:

..so, I think it is more about color saturation setting in a given scanner that may distort the colors, rather than a bias towards one color or another.

 

Lastly, I just used my smart phone to take an admittedly very poor quality photo of my #17 and #18. Tell me what you see... (that's a sincere request, as I have a slight red/green deficiency which can make it harder for me to differentiate certain colors that leap out for most people). Is the 'purple' of my #18 slightly 'greyer' here?

20170321_105659.jpg

Your #18 here looks like the colors I'd expect to see on a nice copy of this issue. I've never seen a copy with that super-purple background and deep red dress as shown in the scans way above. (But I'd like to!)

 

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19 minutes ago, Point Five said:

Your #18 here looks like the colors I'd expect to see on a nice copy of this issue. I've never seen a copy with that super-purple background and deep red dress as shown in the scans way above. (But I'd like to!)

 

I don't know if the colors are 'real' in the 7.5 scan you refer to but if they are I'd love to see it as well.

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5 hours ago, sacentaur said:

Not fading - as noted, FH colors can widely vary. 

FH had full-color interior ads and that's a good indicator to see the colors as printed. For example, a cover may have a color variant the same as an interior ad, so the odds are it was just printed that way.

 

The question of different cover colors for the same book is a recurring theme on the FH boards. There seems to be consensus boardie opinion that there was poor quality control and oversight of the printing and color strike process at FH. Not to mention that the quality of the paper, and probably the quality of the inks, was not high, especially from about issue 12 to issue 50 (May '41 to Sept '47). Many of the other FH titles around this period also suffered from uneven color strikes. All probably driven by "market factors" and wartime paper and printing shortage/restrictions. I suppose the question is, why was the color variation so much more prominent at FH but not with other publishers...?  Interesting, there is much less color variation in the issues (roughly) between 1-11 and 51-73.

As sacentaur says, general fading per se doesn't seem to be the obvious explanation, since it is often the case that while some colors on the cover have lost their lustre (usually blues or reds), other colors on the cover are still strong. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if the blue or red inks were more susceptible to fading than the yellow inks. In this way, the explanation might be fading, i.e., sun bleaching, only that certain colors faded more in the sun than others. At the same time, as shown by Flex above, some of the more zany colorful Planet covers could have occurred precisely because the color in one of the inkwells was running low during printing. 

I wonder if the FH upper management even knew or cared about these color variations, or if there was a specific color balance they were going for from the beginning of a print run.

The idea that the FH full-color interior ads should resemble those on the cover is a good one, and in my experience, the interior ad and the cover do match up, but not always. I've seen cases where the cover colors are "faded" but the interior ad is still glowing with color. If I can track one of these examples down, I'll post it.

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6 hours ago, Zolnerowich said:

 

The question of different cover colors for the same book is a recurring theme on the FH boards. There seems to be consensus boardie opinion that there was poor quality control and oversight of the printing and color strike process at FH. Not to mention that the quality of the paper, and probably the quality of the inks, was not high, especially from about issue 12 to issue 50 (May '41 to Sept '47). Many of the other FH titles around this period also suffered from uneven color strikes. All probably driven by "market factors" and wartime paper and printing shortage/restrictions. I suppose the question is, why was the color variation so much more prominent at FH but not with other publishers...?  Interesting, there is much less color variation in the issues (roughly) between 1-11 and 51-73.

As sacentaur says, general fading per se doesn't seem to be the obvious explanation, since it is often the case that while some colors on the cover have lost their lustre (usually blues or reds), other colors on the cover are still strong. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if the blue or red inks were more susceptible to fading than the yellow inks. In this way, the explanation might be fading, i.e., sun bleaching, only that certain colors faded more in the sun than others. At the same time, as shown by Flex above, some of the more zany colorful Planet covers could have occurred precisely because the color in one of the inkwells was running low during printing. 

I wonder if the FH upper management even knew or cared about these color variations, or if there was a specific color balance they were going for from the beginning of a print run.

The idea that the FH full-color interior ads should resemble those on the cover is a good one, and in my experience, the interior ad and the cover do match up, but not always. I've seen cases where the cover colors are "faded" but the interior ad is still glowing with color. If I can track one of these examples down, I'll post it.

Would depend on how it was printed. I would think you would print all of one side of a cover ( front and back opened up ) then the inside covers ( inside front and inside back with the cover opened up )

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